We came across a middle-aged Vietnamese man searching for cans and bottles in a Vientiane park.

He would even look for them in the rubbish bin and sell them at the end of the day for some cash.

Everything in his plastic bags that you see below is only worth 10,000 kip or $1.20 USD, so you can imagine the hard work to collect all the aluminum bottles and plastic cans just to earn peanuts that is not enough to buy a bowl of fur noodles in Vientiane.

We gave him $1 USD which is about the amount he earns in a day.

We probably should have given him more than that, but we often donate to many less fortunate people on the streets of Laos and they do add up.